Vectorize/trace

Potrace

Alternatives to Potrace (Autotrace and Frontline)

Autotrace

An open source vectorization program by Martin Weber. That means you can convert bitmap images (like scans) to vector graphics. While not optimal for photos, it does good job on line art and poster-like images. Doesn't do too well with color.

Autotrace has some features not available in the embedded Potrace dialog in Inkscape. For example, there is a centerline switch that is especially usefull for tracing roads (in maps) or font characters.

Frontline

A GUI frontend to Autotrace by Masatake Yamato. Frontline can be run as standalone aplication, but it can also be directly accessed from Inkscape and GIMP.

If you want to have tracing option, you have to install both Autotrace and Frontline before compiling Inkscape. Inkscape automatically detects these programs, and adds inline raster to vector conversion option to image menu.

Both Autotrace and Frontline can be downloaded from Sourceforge. Binaries are available for windows and linux.

Delineate

Front end written in java that does interesting things with color images.

Convert to/from SVG

svg2pdf

How to obtain it:

And to update it dive into newly created directory called svg2pdf and type this in console:

git pull

(You must of course have git package installed)

Building

If build-time dependencies are satisfied

librsvg and cairo

you only need to type

make

Usage

./svg2pdf input_file.svg output_file.pdf

Note: from version 0.46 Inkscape can both read and write PDFs directly from the open/save dialogs. These tools however allow this conversion where 0.46 is not available, and also provide a means of validating if bugs encountered are Inkscape related.

ai2svg.py

ai2svg (Illustrator to SVG, recoded in python) is as well a small script that helps turn Adobe Illustrator .ai files into SVG. The Python recode aims to help developers more familiar to python than perl, as well fixing some lacks from ill2svg.pl - supports dashes, layers, textboxes (ascii-latin), and joined pathes.

To use the program, just type:

python ai2svg.py drawing.ai
the result will appear as neighbour, named drawing.ai.svg
options:
--help print this message and exit

fig2vect

fig2vector (fig vector format to other vector formats, including SVG) is a converter from 'Fig format' long time used (at least since 1998) unix vector format (Xfig, figurine, jfig, winfig...), large kind of application output on this format in unix, mostly scientific applications.

GIMP

it imports SVG (with help of librsvg) into bitmap or vector path, exports SVG.

GIMP's selection can be converted to a vector path, and paths can be exported/imported as SVG.

GIMP can be used to create nice textures to use in Inkscape or shapes that can be vectorized in Inkscape. Importing SVG drawings from Inkscape to GIMP allows you to do several effects by filling and stroking shapes.

There is a limited support for drag'n'drop between GIMP and Inkscape:

path, can be drag'n'dropped from Gimp path dialog to Inkscape

pictures can be drag'n'dropped from Gimp document history to Inkscape if it's in a file format that Inkscape understands.

ConversionSVG

ConversionSVG is a GUI that send command line to Inkscape to export in batch SVG to PNG, PS, PDF or EPS. It features a Wizard to help novice to use it. You can choose a size in pixels for your export and give some others parameters.

InkscapeBatch

ConversionSVG is a GUI that send command line to Inkscape to export in batch SVG to PNG, PS, PDF or EPS. It features a Wizard to help novice to use it. You can choose a size in pixels for your export and give some others parameters.

Kig

Kig is a geometry educational tool, it can import from most of the free geom softwares format : kig (own format), kigz (own format compresed), kgeo, seg (Kseg), fgeo (Dr Geo) anf fig, and can export them to SVG, xfig, latex, and image. This can be useful to integrate a geometry activity in a more complet document realized in Inkscape for web reading or printing for schools.

svg_stack

svg_stack combines multiple SVG elements into a single SVG element. It can be called from the command line (less flexible) or called from the Python interface (more flexible).

This tool exists primarily exists to automatically composite SVG files into a single SVG file that remains compatible with Inkscape. If compatibility with Inkscape is not required, one can create an svg file with multiple, nested <svg> elements. Inkscape, however, doesn't seem to handle nested <svg> elements particularly well. Thus, this tool was born.

Video editing, for building animation

Linux Video Editing System

LIVES is the Linux Video Editing System that permits editing and
making video without worries about formats, frame sizes, or frame
rates. It doesn't support SVG directly yet, but you can create animated
works by moving your shapes in Inkscape and exporting as numbered
png's.

Kdenlive

Kdenlive is a non-linear video editor for Linux, that allow editing, mixing several video and audio using several timelines with previews, add audio/video effects using effects stacks, add text for title or subtitle. It support SVG (but not svgz, at least in svn 20070410).

Create a PDF slide show. For example, make a PDF slideshow from a number of SVG files you have made with inkscape. Just put the files in a text file, each SVG filename on one line, and then run "svgslides", and a PDF file will be created

Create a picture perfect PDF from one svg file. Just use the utility svgslides-svg2pdf

Create "incremental" slides. Just give SVG objects special lables (e.g., "part1", "part2"), and svgslides will make a show in which these parts of an svg file will be displayed in a sequence.

Written as bash shell script and uses common packages. Easy to install.

Scribus

Scribus is a publishing software supporting SVG, allowing to organise Inkscape documents as a full featured pre-press tool. It doesn't support SVG filters (blur/blend modes...), but manage most of other features.

JessyInk

JessyInk is a JavaScript that can be incorporated into an Inkscape SVG file. It turns every layer of the image into a frame of a slide show. The slide shows can be viewed in any browser supporting SVG and JavaScript. Current features include: different transitions between slides, automatic slide numbering and an index sheet view.

Sozi

Sozi creates JavaScript based presentations which pan through a large svg containing all slides at once. Portions of the large svg can be defined which are then shown in presenation mode. Also free panning and zooming is possible during presentations.

SVG Charter

JSpecView

JSpecView is a Java project with application and applet designed to display spectra in the JCAMP-DX format. It can export the display as standard SVG or as an Inkscape SVG document for import by Blender as a path.

Diagrams

Graphviz

Graphviz is a tool for automatic graph drawing, it produces structural information as diagrams of abstract graphs and networks in SVG and other vector formats. Several diagrams softwares use this tool or dot file managed by this tool in variety application domains including: